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Geo Sci Master 2.
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Exam of 200 pages for the course Nursing assessment at Nursing assessment (Geo Sci Master 2.)
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1. Most Americans support science because:A. All scientists are sexy.
B. Science has helped make our lives easier, safer, etc.
C. All Americans are bored silly by science.
D. The scientific method allows scientists to learn the Truth.
E. All Americans are fascinated by science.
Without science and technology, the great majority of us would be dead, so we tend to be supporters
of science. Although we know that science works, we’re never sure that it is completely right. Students
so often discover things that professors missed, or that professors got wrong, that scientists would be
silly to claim Truth. Comparing the TV ratings of the latest hit to the ratings of the latest Nova
broadcast on public broadcasting shows that many Americans are not fascinated by science, but the
Nova ratings are above zero, so some people are fascinated by science. And hope as we might, it is
unfortunately clear that not every scientist is sexy (just most of them are…).
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: B
2. A scientist gains knowledge about how the world works, and uses that information to successfully
predict what will happen in an experiment. This proves that the scientist’s knowledge is:
A. Lucky; no one knows what is going on, so only lucky people get things right.
B. One or more of True, lucky, or close to being true (or cheating), but we can’t tell which.
C. Cheating.
D. Close; no one really knows what is going on, but people sort of know.
E. True; you can’t get it right unless you know what is going on.
If you guessed “heads” before a coin flip, and it came up heads, that would NOT prove that you can
predict all coin flips; you will get half of such guesses correct by chance. You might be cheating, you
might be lucky, or you might have figured something out.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: B
3. Newton’s ideas on physics “won”, and Aristotle’s ideas were kicked out of science and over into
history. Why?
A. Newton’s ideas did a better job of predicting how nature would behave.
B. Newton’s ideas appealed to dead white European males, whereas Aristotle’s didn’t because
Aristotle wore a toga all the time.
C. Newton won the Nobel prize.
D. Newton’s ideas appealed to dead white European males, whereas Aristotle’s didn’t.
E. Newton’s ideas were more elegant, and so were intellectually favored.
Unlike painting or literature, scientific inquiry has a well-defined procedure for figuring out if Newton's
ideas are better or if Aristotle had it right all along. In looking at a painting, we can ask different people
what they think, or we can make up our own mind on whether we like it or not, and that is perfectly
valid. In science, we have to ask: does the idea fit with the way the world works? Can I predict the
speed of a falling object better using Newton's ideas or Aristotle's? As it turns out, Aristotle’s ideas
didn’t predict things very well, and Newton’s did.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: A
4. Science professors teach certain theories and not others (Newton’s physics, and not Aristotle’s, or
Darwin’s evolution and not Lamarck’s). If you were to ask the professors why, a majority would tell
you:
A. Well, we have to teach something in exchange for all those wads of cash you students pay,
and this is more fun.”
, B. “Lamarck and Darwin are so left-wing, and you know all of us professors are part of a vast
right-wing conspiracy cleverly dressed up to look like a vast left-wing conspiracy.”
C. “Lamarck and Darwin are so right-wing, and you know all of us professors are part of a vast
leftwing conspiracy.”
D. “Hey, I’m the professor, shut up.”
E. “Nature has repeatedly been asked (through experiment) which is better, and we are teaching
the ones that succeeded in making successful predictions, and not teaching the ones that
failed.”
You can be quite confident that the big-picture items in science class have been tested against reality
and found to work. There still might be someone in academe who would reply with B (your professors
remember a couple of their professors who could have said such a thing) (the technical term for
anyone who would reply with the quote in B is “jerk”), but that is pretty rare today.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: E
5. Your boss has assigned you to get the low-down on the latest wonder-drug, and to be darn sure to
get it right. You would be wise to consult:
A. The web site in the email you received with the subject line “Grow your ***** naturally with new
wonder drug”.
B. The New York Times article quoting the discoverer of the drug on how wonderful it is.
C. The article in the Journal of the American Medical Society, a peer-reviewed scientific journal,
reporting on the discovery and testing of the drug.
D. The web site of the manufacturer of the wonder drug; they know more about it than anyone
else does.
E. The Wikipedia; everything they publish is up-to-date.
No source of information is perfect, but the refereed articles in learned journals put immense effort into
“getting it right”. The web has some reliable information, but probably most of the information on the
web is not especially reliable. The web is very inexpensive, and lots of people put junk on it. The
Wikipedia gets a lot of things right, but it is a distilled synopsis of the real stuff. Most newspapers are
around for the long haul, and try to make the news fairly accurate, although some newspapers do have
agendas, and the editorial pages are not especially accurate. But, if the report is on the views of a
public figure, the newspaper may accurately report what the public figure said, but what the public
figure said may be less than completely accurate. And while you are welcome to believe that an
unsolicited email promising to grow your ***** will do so… don’t count on it.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: C
6. The peer review process, in which scientists submit their ideas and experiments to a set of
colleagues who judge how good the ideas are before the ideas can be published, is:
A. A way to keep unpopular or dangerous ideas out of public circulation.
B. A way for the Scientific Establishment to maintain control over ideas and theories.
C. None of the other answers.
D. Always infallible.
E. The way all publications do business, including the popular press such as the New York Times,
Centre Daily Times, National Enquirer, etc.
The peer review process applies to scientific publications and works like this: I get an idea and do
some experiments to test it and write down the results of the tests. I send the paper to a scientific
journal (Nature, Journal of Geophysical Research, etc.) and the editor of the journal sends it to a
number of other scientists who can best judge whether my methods are good, whether my results are
new and interesting, and whether my paper ought to be published. They don't base their judgements
on whether they like me or not or whether I'm a nice guy/gal or not (or at least they ought not base
their judgments on that, though it does happen: we're human!). They don't base their judgements on
whether my ideas are popular or unpopular. They are only supposed to ask: is this really new (i.e., did
somebody else think of this and publish it already somewhere else?) and are the methods used
accurate and repeatable?
Points Earned: 1/1
, Your Response: C
7. The Earth has an iron-rich core, but the moon doesn’t have nearly as much iron as the Earth does.
The moon was formed from material blasted from near Earth’s surface by collision between Earth
and a Mars-sized. How do these observations fit together?
A. The collision that formed the moon happened after the Earth had separated into layers.
B. Bart Simpson really made the moon.
C. The collision that formed the moon made the Earth spin really fast, which caused the Earth to
separate into layers.
D. The collision that formed the moon happened before the Earth separated into layers, and later
the Earth melted and separated.
E. Graham Spanier really made the moon.
Melting allows things to sort out more easily. Think of the rocks and snow and ice and salt and squirrel
parts that stick on the bottom of your car when you drive in a snowstorm, and how they sort
themselves out when they melt in the garage or in the spring. Much evidence points to early separation
of the Earth into layers, before the collision with a Mars-sized body that blasted out the
material that made the moon, although a little bit of separating may still be going on. The type of
material falling together to make the planet may have changed as the planet formed, but this doesn’t
seem to have been too important in controlling things. And mighty as Graham Spanier is, this was a bit
before his time.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: A
8. What controls the behavior of materials in the Earth?
A. The pressure; more-squeezed things flow more easily.
B. The temperature and pressure, but not the composition.
C. The temperature, pressure and composition.
D. The composition; higher-silica things flow more easily.
E. The temperature; hotter things flow more easily.
The solid inner core and liquid outer core are both believed to be iron with a little nickel and other
materials; the inner core is solid because the pressure on it is higher than on the liquid outer core, and
the outer core is liquid because it is hot enough to melt at the pressure there. The change from the
liquid outer core to the solid mantle occurs because of a change in composition, from a mostly iron
core to a silica-iron mantle. Hence, some changes in behavior are caused by changes in composition,
and other changes in behavior are caused by changes in pressure-temperature conditions.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: C
9. The asthenosphere is:
A. The very center of the Earth.
B. The cold outermost part of the mantle, plus the crust, that break rather than flow.
C. The soft part of the mantle below the lithosphere; the lithosphere is the hottest part of the
mantle plus the crust, which flow rather than breaking.
D. The cold outermost part of the mantle, plus that crust, that flow rather than break.
E. The soft part of the mantle below the lithosphere; the lithosphere is the uppermost part of the
mantle plus the crust, which tend to break rather than flow.
The uppermost mantle is cold enough that it doesn’t flow easily, so it rides along with the crust in
lithospheric plates rafting on deeper, softer asthenospheric mantle. The deepest crust is a bit soft,
because at a given temperature the high-silica crust is softer than the low silica mantle, but let’s not
get too complex here.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: E
10. The Earth includes:
, A. A Pepsi inner core, a Coke outer core, and a mantle of Gatorade drinkers.
B. A liquid inner core, a solid outer core, and a mantle with a liquid asthenosphere.
C. A solid inner core, a liquid outer core, and a mantle with a little liquid in a mostly solid
asthenosphere.
D. A liquid inner core, a solid outer core, and a mantle with a little liquid in a mostly solid
asthenosphere.
E. A solid inner core, a liquid outer core, and a mantle with a liquid asthenosphere.
High pressure stabilizes solid in the inner core, but the slightly lower pressure on the outer core allows
the iron there to be melted. The iron-silicate mantle is mostly solid, but a bit of melt occurs in the
asthenosphere. And the great heat of the core would break down both natural and artificial
sweeteners, so cola cannot be found there.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: C
11. In chemistry, the type of an atom (what element it is) is determined by:
A. The number of neutrons it contains in its nucleus.
B. The number of neutrons it has in a cloud around the nucleus.
C. The number of electrons it exchanges with its neighbors.
D. The number of protons it contains in its nucleus.
E. The number of protons it has in a cloud around the nucleus.
Physicists change the name when the number of charged, massive protons in the nucleus changes.
Adding one proton makes a HUGE difference to how an atom behaves, and so deserves a new name.
The neutrons hang around in the nucleus to keep the protons from kicking each other out. Exchanging
electrons is important, but doesn’t change the element type.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: D
12. We speak of elements, such as gold, or oxygen, or iron. If you got some gold, and started
dividing it into smaller and smaller pieces, the smallest piece that would be an:
A. Proton.
B. Neutron.
C. Electron.
D. Quark.
E. Atom.
We can break matter down into atoms (Greek for “not cuttable” because the Greeks didn’t have atom
smashers or other exotic tools that would allow cutting atoms into smaller pieces). All of the wrong
answers here are smaller pieces of atoms, but they wouldn’t be gold any more; you can make any of
the elements out of these pieces.
Points Earned: 1/1
Your Response: E
13. Chemical reactions involve:
A. The sharing or trading of quarks.
B. The sharing or trading of protons.
C. The sharing or trading of electrons.
D. The sharing or trading of neutrons.
E. The sharing or trading of partons.
The cloud of electrons around the nucleus serve as the Velcro of the universe. Atoms gain or lose
electrons and then stick together by static electricity, or else share electrons and stick together inside
the shared cloud. The nuclei with their protons and neutrons composed of quarks (which also were
called partons at one time) are the things held together by the electronic Velcro of chemistry.
Your Response: C
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